


Communication Breakdown

by robogreaser



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Ancestors (Homestuck), M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, SBURB/SGRUB (Homestuck)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:14:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23618836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robogreaser/pseuds/robogreaser
Summary: The world has ended due to an all too familiar game, and Summoner has seen it happen far too many times. Confronted by Handmaid, the two of them begin to discuss and attempt to handle the catastrophes they've set up and that are looming on the horizon.
Relationships: Darkleer/The Summoner (Homestuck), Orphaner Dualscar/The Summoner
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Communication Breakdown

_Your name is irrelevant._ He told himself this over and over, trying his damnedest not to spend another moment narrating what his life had become. Avoiding the few mirrors in his home was easy enough. All it took was keeping your head down. Trying to police your own thoughts, in this way, day in and day out?

Impossible.

His home was a vacant sanctuary in a seemingly endless desert, and right now there was a blessing in all of that. Bull needed the quiet. He _needed_ some solitude. Wings draped like a cape behind him, aching, twitching idly from the echoes of a long flight, a long fight, and the heat of the sand and featureless skies outside. Fine. He could deal with that much. He had lead revolutions, as a puppet and a diplomat, as a faux emperor, as a man in the face of the apocalypse. He knew he had it in him to take a few steps more before he collapsed and put together a few scrap minutes of rest, stitched together like a sloppy quilt.

His title was the Summoner, but he stopped using it when he dipped his toe into the expanse of the multiverse. There were countless versions of himself out there, each with unique histories, biologies, and feelings on even the things he himself was so steadfast and stubborn about. His given name was Rufioh, but there were still countless others going by that. Perhaps it was unoriginal, but he called himself Bull.

The land he was trapped in, this desert dotted with oases and canyons, dry and hot, blistering and scathing, it had made him a god, or driven him to making himself a god. He had spent what felt like eons, sweeps upon sweeps, trawling through that desert, those canyons, those oases, and found enough data to know enough. And he had _had enough_.

The Prince of Breath was home and he was damned tired.

He kept things spartan. The main living quarters were all open, clear sight lines from one end of the hive to the other, the far wall entirely glass so he could see out and into the desolate sands. The furniture was low, dense, stationed in a manner that made it easy to duck and hide lest someone or something break in and pose a threat. He learned that sort of nonsensical over-preparedness from his days in war. No place was safe. Not even home. It looked nice. That was a bonus. Could he enjoy it, his minimalist palace in the desert? No. Not really. He spent time delving in the recesses of the game for more data, for more understanding, and when he wasn’t on missions out in those canyon lands, he was home, scrubbing fine sand from the age lines slowly growing deeper on his face.

Bull had rare moments to himself where he would ping online, send out a sad message or two into the multiverse, and hope someone would bite. He didn’t need to do that today.

It wasn’t often he bothered looking over towards where he kept his dining table, having spent most of his days eating just the bare minimum out of his pack or his sylladex. But he couldn’t help it today. Frozen, fingers caught somewhere between a fist and a flex of anxiety, his eyes went wide as he stared at his guest.

She pouted. “Oh Nitram, you look so displeased to see me…”

He snapped to attention, stance like that of a soldier at the ready. His wings had been a cape trailing behind him, and now they glowed, a taught, orange halo around his body, twitching as he readied himself to take off. At his fingertips a small fleck of blue light glitched into and out of existence.

“Settle down, flyboy,” she scoffed, rolling her eyes as she leaned, one elbow on the table, the other in her lap, all while she leaned forward and blew a smoke ring at Bull. “It’s been a while. Maybe I just wanted to sit down and chat with you for a bit.”

“Maybe…”

His wings buzzed and he floated up and backwards. His voice was low, a slight accent of something non-Imperial rolling around his chest and escaping his throat. He snarled. With a deft snap of his wrist, he drew his weapons and pointed them at Handmaid. She wasn’t welcome here. He knew that she knew that much.

“What, no lance for me?” she asked, still pouting, batting her undoubtedly faux lashes at Bull.

He growled, the sound coming up from him a little clicky, a little ticky, somewhere between insectoid and mammalian. He cocked his pistol and took his aim. “Bitch, I don’t have time for nostalgia.”

She sighed. He didn’t see it, the entire process happening too fast for his measly organic eyes to see, but a film of red light consumed his gun, and though his hand burned, nothing really happened to it. His weapon though? It rusted. It flaked, peeled, and began to disintegrate in an instant, staining his dark hand and leaving him shaking, both with rage and an uncertain fear. Handmaid had already taken so much from him, but he never thought he would be completely, truly defenseless in his own home. Damn her and her dominion over time.

“Sit down,” she said, pointing to the chair opposite her at the table. “Don’t make me bust out the big guns and try my luck at manipulating your body’s place in the time stream.”

It didn’t show, he had tamed himself enough, but a lightning bolt of terror ran down Bull’s spine. He already had enough trouble. He didn’t need more. He didn’t need time around him to fall apart any further. And, yet, despite his best efforts to hold his own and defend his own castle, he descended, feet touching down next to the chair Handmaid was still pointing to. It was now, with absolute bile souring his entire being, that he noticed the cigarette in its antiquated holder in her hand.

“You really do just choose to do whatever it is in your power to make my life a living hell, don’t you, Megido?” He kicked gently at the chair, a cool guy trick to sit himself down without breaking a moment of disgusted eye contact with his own personal demon.

“Oh come on, Nitram…” she blew another smoke ring, this time upwards, her blunt fringe of hair sweeping with the motion of her head, something equally elegant and a subtle jab at Bull. “I just need to have a good old fashioned chat with my other scummy lowblood partner-in-crime, two hombres; just a God and a Goddess sitting down and discussing business. If I wanted to have any fun with it, I would have brought Serket.”

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't posted written work, fanfiction or otherwise, in nearly five years. I struggled with myself over whether I should or not considering the state of the Homestuck fandom. That being said, I've been working on this far too long to let it go to waste.
> 
> Stay tuned.


End file.
